Ghostbusters: The Game Remastered(Nintendo Switch) Review

After playing Ghosthunter a few months ago and strongly disliking that game, I wanted to replay for a 3rd time a shooter where you fight ghosts. I always remember Ghostbusters the games as being one of those well made licensed 3rd person shooters from 7th gen like the Transformers Cybertron games and Warhammer 40K Space Marine and does it still hold up? I'd say for the most part it does all though I'm noticing some major design issues that bother me much more now. It's a well made game but there are things about GB the game that annoys me a lot when I played it recently.

Before I start this, I'm not sure if this applies to the other versions of the remastered edition but the Switch version really isn't that great. I suffered one crash which never happened to me when playing on PS3 or replaying on PS4. That and the load times are super slow and that can be really bothersome especially during the game's difficulty spikes. It's not the worst way to play but if you can find alternate ways to play, I suggest looking into them.

As for the game itself, it's a pretty unique third person shooter in a number of ways, the best way of describing it that what if you had the controls and camera perspective of Gears of War, the scaning from Metroid Prime and the fact that your primary antagonist you will be actively fighting in the game are ghost and how the run away constantly and phase through walls like the Fatal Frame games. You get this.

Before I get to the gameplay, the story is worth mentioning since the script for the game is esstentially the official sequel to Ghostbusters 2...before the recent new movies but that is besides the point. It's full of charm and the character interactions are decent fun even though I haven't watched the movies in a while. However it does seem to expect you to know the first two films before jumping into the game which can be a little offputting, but it's still a moderately entertaining story for the kind of game this is even if a big issue with the story is that the player character feels like he has no agency or geniune value to the story since the player is doing all the work but the Ghostbusters crew takes all the credit and they are the ones who the plot acknowledges. Since was originally a movie script so it does show to some degree.

The gameplay however is mostly good even if there are some big issues I have with it. The Gears of War inspirations can be seen in that the Ghostbusters during gameplay are kind of like COG soliders who are with you in Gears, they help you out and talk during gameplay and you have to revive them if they are down, but on the flipside before the later Gears games, the Ghostbusters can revive you provided if they aren't downed by enemies themselves.

Metroid Prime inspirations can be seen in that you have 4 selectable weapons which you can use by touching the D pad and the PKE meter is esstentially Samus' scan visor. How you can scan various parts of the environment and what attacks enemies are weak to.

This makes for a TPS game that I can't find a similar game to. It also has unqiue ideas of it's own where you need to "trap" ghosts instead of killing them and they are mixed in with enemies who can be killed traditionally. This makes for a robust combat system where you will shoot enemies traditionally one minute and trap ghosts the next and this novelty as well as competent execution really makes the game.

However I mentioned some major issues, a smaller one is that while the PKE meter is cool, sometimes it feels pointless since allies will use the current weapon enemies are weak to which takes away from using it. There is some use in it with that said when fighting newer enemies.

The upgrade system is also rather pointless since by the end of the game you will be able to unlock everything just by playing the game normally.

The biggest issue I have is the difficulty spikes, the enemies and the inept friendly AI. When Ghostbusters the game is fun, it's a really good time, but there are some enemies and encounters that can sap away the fun. The gargoyles are the worst enemies in the game since their attacks are poorly telegraphed on top of being able to stagger the player character to insane degrees, if you get hit by them 3 times, it's a game over and it's a 50-50 game of chance if you friendly AI will be able to revive you. You don't fight them throughout the whole game but they ruin it every time they pop up.

The friendly AI is pretty bad and will be get downed a lot which is one really annoying way GB the game tries to add difficulty, you are fighting enemies and they will need reviving and get in your way. The checkpoint system however prevents the game from being infuriating. The health system isn't that great since it's hard to tell when I'm at critical plus the staggering.

Overall, Ghostbusters the game mostly is good but it has some major problems that can cause me to rage like crazy when the difficulty spikes happened.